A few years ago, my German translator was driving me round Berlin. As we circled the Grosser Stern, I asked about the grandiose monument at its centre: blockhouse supporting colonnade supporting fluted pillar, all topped off by a 25-foot golden winged goddess. "That's the Victory Column," she replied. "For the only war we ever won." The only major one, anyway. Victories over Denmark and Austria in the 1860s had been like European Championship successes; but the crushing of France in 1870 was World Cup stuff. And as with England's 1966 Wembley triumph, this solitary victory became subsequently fetishised: the Nazis, when resiting the column to its present position in 1938, turned it in admonitory fashion so that the figure was pointing west, towards France. "Two world wars, one World Cup," our more lumpen supporters chant at the Kameraden on the opposing terraces. Inviting the reply, "Three World Cups, one Franco-Prussian war." No, it might get lost in translation.

Football, as Helmuth von Moltke reminded us, is war by other means; or perhaps vice versa. And now the season of dumb patriotism is upon us again: off to battle not on a white charger but in a white van. The flag of St George has been reclaimed from the neo-Nazis; while the Health Service is preparing for the consequences of either victory or defeat (but especially anything to do with penalties): heart attacks, domestic violence, self-inflicted wounds - not a reference to David James - and increased car-crash injuries. Meanwhile, on a more literary note, OUP has just reprinted the Rules of Association Football 1863 in time for the travelling fan to pack it with his condoms and his optimism.

Sports-despisers see only belligerent flag-waggery in the quadrennial (biennial, if you add in the European Championships) feverishness; but it is underlain by a kind of innocent expectation that is almost touching. Delusion about probable success is mixed with a genuine belief in the rightness of the cause, and a trust that such rightness will be rewarded. In 1870 French reservists hurried to the railway stations of Paris with the cry of "à Berlin!", expecting to be there in a matter of weeks. Plus ça change: the English (and the French, not to mention Trinidad and Tobagan) fans are even now imagining a final rendezvous in that city on July 9.

Stefan Zweig (well, this is the Review section, not the sports pages) witnessed the start of two world wars, one from each side. He noted how in 1914 there was a "childish naïve credulity" about the patriotism, a shining trust in national leaders, and a romantic vision of war. The next time, with the truths of battle still fresh, there was an altogether more sober atmosphere: this was to be a war with greater moral meaning. "The war of 1914, on the other hand," Zweig wrote, "knew nothing of realities, it still served a delusion, the dream of a better, a righteous and peaceful world. And it is only delusion, and not knowledge, that bestows happiness." As all football supporters know in their hearts.

Fittingly, therefore, it is 1914-18 rather than 1939-45 that provides such mythic conjunction as exists between football and war. Witness those legendary games in no-man's-land between Tommy and Fritz during the Christmas truces, with "Stille Nacht" issuing from gruff Silesian throats in the opposing dugout. Melvyn Bragg, in his introduction to the Rules, reminds us that at the start of that first war, the government used football matches for recruitment purposes. According to the Times, by November 1914, 100,000 men had volunteered through football associations, while 2,000 of the "5,000" professional footballers had joined up. Though two football battalions were certainly raised, these figures are probably inflated. The story is not just one of shining virility. Soccer was widely criticised for disloyally continuing throughout the 1914-15 season - whereas rugby patriotically hung up its boots. Rudyard Kipling, an active recruiter as well as a hounder of conchies and cowards, reported a plan early in the war to raise a football battalion from the "1,800" professional players (quite how the figures and the battalions tally - if they do - is unclear, as most of the records were destroyed in the second war). But apparently only "a few score" signed up, and the idea had to be dropped. Kipling commented in disgust: "What a stinking game is soccer."

The 1863 codifi-cation, drawn up in a Lincoln's Inn pub by a group of Oxbridge graduates, is much venerated as the starting-point for the game; Bragg chose it as one of his 12 books that changed the world. The activity it describes, however, a sort of kick-and-catch progress towards a crossbar-less goal, is much closer to rugby - or perhaps Australian Rules - than anything that will be seen in Germany over the next weeks. Sir Bobby Charlton, in a preface, maintains that these rudimentary laws embody the "essence and spirit" of the game, and evoke the "honesty" and "courage" of the participants. It's hard to see where he gets this from. Perhaps Rule 9: "Neither tripping nor hacking shall be allowed and no player shall use his hands to push or hold his adversary." Or Rule 13: "No player shall wear projecting nails, iron plates or gutta percha on the soles or heels of his boots." That's not projecting fingernails, either.

My German translator informs me that the street immediately behind the Victory Column is to be closed off and turned into a "Fan Mile" for the tournament. "Apparently they can watch the games there on big screens, eat, drink, sing songs, beat each other up and generally make a nuisance of themselves," she adds enthusiastically. She also wishes to remind England fans - to avoid any misunderstanding - that the Victory Column has in recent years been adopted as a totem by Berlin's gay population. There is even a magazine named after it, which has the highest gay-and-lesbian circulation in Germany. Now that's really reclaiming a symbol.

· The Rules of Association Football 1863, Oxford University Press, £5.99